2014 NDTMA Conference

The 2014 Annual NDTMA Conference was held at the Golden Nugget, Las Vegas, NV. The conference started on Tuesday evening, February 11 and ended on Thursday, February 13; with management seminars on Tuesday afternoon and Friday morning. There were 362 people in attendance. There were also 55 table top exhibits. The PowerPoint presentations from the four sessions will be posted here in PDF format in early March. The dates for the 2015 Annual Conference are Tuesday, February 10 through Thursday, February 12. It will again be held at the Golden Nugget in Las Vegas, NV. The base room price is the same as 2013 & 2014, $49 per night with free Internet for people who register directly with the hotel and mention NDTMA. Some people don’t do that; they use Expedia or some other method, or just fail to mention NDTMA. Free Internet may not be available if you use a third party such as Expedia to make your reservation.

The 2014 Annual Conference program content was as follows. Selecting the presentation of interest after “DOWNLOAD” will download that presentation. Some downloads are large and may take several minutes.

Mark Whitacre’s presentation has a strong emphasis on corporate culture, ethics and compliance. His topic is an important personal and business ethics lesson about “doing the right thing” and the need to think “long term.” His presentation is extremely entertaining as he actively engages his audience about how he wore a wire for the FBI everyday traveling the globe for three years in one of the largest white-collar crime cases in U.S. history. But, his story is also about hope, family commitment, redemption and second chances, and a wonderful example of a family overcoming extreme adversity, against all odds.

Mark’s takeaway messages include:

A very inspirational message about overcoming adversity against all odds

His message is found to be extremely motivating by all audiences

A remarkable story showing clearly that 2nd chances really do exist in America

The ultimate real-life lesson in personal and business ethics accountability

ALWAYS doing the right thing

The need to think long-term in all of your personal and business decisions

Market studies have outlined challenges to the industrial inspection market, most notably high labor costs and the lack of trained technicians. The challenge is to provide industry with a cost efficient, easy to use tool that produces high quality data resulting in earlier defect detection while increasing productivity. Industry employs a wide variety of NDT techniques, but there is a need for a simple, real time diagnostic tool for in-service inspections. The complexities of advanced techniques result in a shortage of qualified technicians who can quickly detect subsurface defects over large areas. Traditional ultrasonic testing (UT) on pipes and flat plates is very tedious. Phased-array UT (PAUT) is very time consuming and difficult to use. Automated UT (AUT) is expensive and requires the removal of any coatings that might be applied to the pipe before inspection. We will be reporting on recent results utilizing a real time portable technique to find internal damage for oil and gas and aerospace applications. Less training is required than for phased array systems. We will describe results showing how much faster and easier corrosion testing, void detection, and crack detection can be over conventional methods. These and other results will be reported.

The presentation will go through the process and detail the steps taken from an Equipment Manufacturers perspective to address a specific issue and bring a solution to market. The presentation will provide background regarding the information gathering to laying the customers goals in order to solve the solution. This presentation will use a specific application that the speaker was involved in as a case study in order to show what equipment manufacturers face when bringing a solution to the marketplace.

Rockets and Spacecraft – Then, Now and the Future for NDTSteve Senne, Senne Technical Services DownloadSenne1

The speaker’s career began and now largely centers on the space launch business. We went to the moon and we are now talking about colonizing Mars. All endeavors will need to be accomplished safely. That is where NDT will have significance. Will you and your future generations be ready for this heroic effort? The presentation will detail some of the efforts currently being made and planned in the privatized launch business from the responsible Level III at Space-X.

TECHNICAL SESSION

Introduction to Industrial Rope Access and NDT Applications

Mark Kenneth Howe, Mistras Group Download Not Available

To provide an introduction to the basics techniques and equipment used in Industrial Rope Access. Discuss related topics such as safety issues, regulatory requirements, training, and rescue. Include project profiles and examples of work performed by rope access teams that are relevant to the audience; discuss NDT specific applications and limitations.

Pulsed X-ray generators are used more every year for NDT applications. Operators and regulators have some common misconceptions about the technology. The purpose of this presentation is to provide basic technical information regarding the functional operation, limitations, safety concerns, and unique regulatory issues associated with pulsed X-ray technology. Examples illustrating successful and flawed implementation will help attendees determine if pulsed X-ray technology is a viable option for their application.

Linear diode arrays (LDAs) have been the imaging workhorses for applications such as airport security, food quality, and tire safety inspection. LDAs are well suited for such applications for several reasons. They enable imaging while objects are in motion, achieve wide scanning widths, and are cost effective. LDAs and their highly-sensitive cousins, the time-delayed integration (TDI) detectors, also achieve higher signal-to-noise and contrast-to-noise ratios through inherent scatter rejection and multiplication of the image signal, enabling multiple applications requiring high image quality and faster inspection speeds.

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act intent is to ensure that all Americans have access to quality, affordable health care and will create the transformation within the health care system necessary to contain costs. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has determined that the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act is fully paid for, will provide coverage to more than 94% of Americans while staying under the $900 billion limit that President Obama established, bending the health care cost curve, and reducing the deficit over the next ten years and beyond. However, numerous delays and exceptions to the plan have only underscored flaws in the Healthcare law. Challenges with the healthcare.gov website and the individual mandate have only heightened what trouble might be ahead in 2015.

This presentation will review the best practices utilized by GE and other major corporations which outline how best to identify, develop, and retain top talent individuals to ensure organizational vitality. Corporations like GE spend millions of dollars every year funding leadership development programs in key functional areas such as finance, supply chain, commercial, and information technology. These programs allow young leaders to glean experience and expertise from existing professionals while giving them the opportunity to implement new ways of thinking to challenge the corporate status quo and maintain a competitive edge in the marketplace

This presentation will explain why, in the United States of America (USA), the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) implemented the “National Emphasis Program” (NEP) in June of 2007. This instruction provides guidance to Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) national, regional, and area offices and state programs which choose to implement a similar program concerning OSHA’s policy and procedures for implementing a National Emphasis Program (NEP) to reduce or eliminate workplace hazards associated with the catastrophic release of highly hazardous chemicals (HHC) at petroleum refineries. In July 27, 2009 OSHA implemented a National Emphasis Program (NEP) for the petrochemical industry also and we will cover this as well. Because of the cooperation between different countries and the global nature of Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), instruction, we believe that this information and instruction is of great global interest. It is very apparent that “Mechanical Integrity” (MI) in the Oil & Gas Petrochemical process facilities and infrastructures are of the up most importance in today’s inspection activities.

Analytical Training Consultants has written and submitted to the American Petroleum Institute (API) a training course on API-RP 578 “Material Verification Program for New and Existing Alloy Piping Systems”, and was approved by the American Petroleum Institute (API) as a Certified Training Provider, (TPCP-#0118) in January 2008. We are the only API/TPCP company that is approved to train and certify Positive Material Identification (PMI) technicians, globally. This approved API/TPCP PMI certification course is the topic of this presentation and will offer the reasons, purpose and criteria for this huge global need to be properly trained to perform Positive Material Identification (PMI) in today’s Petrochemical Oil & Gas Industry. We will explain the need and requirements for “Positive Material Identification” (PMI) using Portable X-Ray Fluorescent (XRF) and Mobil Optical Emission Spectroscopy (OES) technologies.

The purpose of the Training Course is to certify and re-certify Non Destructive Technology (NDT) inspectors, in understanding and applying API RP 578 through an approved API/TPCP Training Course that will qualify personnel in proper guidelines and application procedures utilizing XRF and OES technologies for PMI. The certification course is covered in 2-day sessions and instruction on both classroom theory with field-testing procedures as a requirement. The need and now requirement for Positive Material Identification (PMI) has dramatically grown in the past few years in refinery and petrochemical plant operations to 100% alloy material verification in today’s risk-based quality control (QC) and quality assurance (QA) environment.

Great brand positioning is the foundation for successful marketing – it helps people understand, value and identify with your brand. It also is vital to driving preference, market share and bottom line growth. This interactive workshop covers five practices you need to implement to strengthen your brand and positioning. Attendees will learn how to define and differentiate their brand via engaging, simple activities. Attendees will also walk away with an understanding of how to apply their brand position across the many marketing tools available today.

The committee for Revision 4 of AIA/NAS 410 is proposing changes in the wording for Specific “Open Book” Examinations to remove some ambiguity created by the wording in Revision 3. In 2013, AIA released interpretations to PRI/NADCAP without notifying the user base. This created conflict with NADCAP audits whereby a PRI staff engineer declared “Let’s put some sanity in this!” The speaker agrees and this is his attempt to set the record straight.

Implementation of Part 37 Requirements by NRC and the Agreement StatesDuncan White, USNRC Download White

The presentation will cover implementation of Part 37 requirements , and will also touch on enforcement, licensing and safety culture.

The presentation will be an overview of several recent safety significant radiography events which had actual consequences. The goal is to share the information not only about the events and safety consequences, but also the contributing causes and the regulatory perspective. This information will provide the audience with an opportunity to reflect on their own programs and assess whether these events could occur at their respective facilities. Hopefully this information will be shared with the attendee’s radiography staff so they can better understand the causes and consequences to prevent similar events and take proactive steps to enhance safety.